ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey is making a mistake by linking an improvement in ties with Armenia, including reopening their shared border, to a settlement of Armenia’s long-running conflict with Azerbaijan, a think-tank report said yesterday.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this month that the border would remain shut until Armenia withdrew from Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave it has controlled since it fought a war with Azerbaijan in the early 1990s.

His comments highlighted the seriousness of the Karabakh problem for Turkey, despite the announcement last month of a joint Turkish-Armenian “road map” toward re-establishing diplomatic ties and reopening the border.

“Tying the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement to the Karabakh issue, which won’t be resolved for a long time, is a great mistake because Turkey’s policy of punishing Armenia has yet to yield the results it wants,” said Aybars Gorgulu, co-author of the report for the Istanbul-based Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation. “Normalization appears indexed to resolving the Karabakh issue, making it the most serious obstacle, even if the issue is not part of the bilateral talks,” Gorgulu said.